262: Chapter 263 My Skills Have Improved

The view temporarily leaves the Yuanwang Star System.

In the cold and deep expanse of the star-filled sea, the strike cruiser "Pale Maw" of the Carcharodons Chapter is sailing through the void, spewing exhaust flames.

At this moment, inside the gene-seed modification laboratory on the lower deck.

3rd Company Captain Bale Shar stands with his arms crossed behind thick, bulletproof glass.

He watches as sixty muscular giants, wearing only oversized tactical briefs, stand in neat rows in the spacious chamber before him.

Looking at these sixty newly minted Astartes recruits, whose average height is approaching three meters and who exude an aura of oppression.

This battle-hardened Captain falls into deep contemplation.

Or, to be precise, his eyes reveal an unprecedented sense of confusion and absurdity.

"This defies common sense..." Bale Shar mutters to himself.

According to the Imperium of Man's rigid, unchangeable, and standardized selection and modification procedures that have been in place for tens of thousands of years.

Space Marine must be selected and trained starting from childhood, around the age of ten.

This not only allows for the maximum success rate of organ implantation while the bones have not yet fused;

but also allows for indoctrination from a young age, ensuring absolute loyalty to the Chapter.

But what about this batch of people?

They were modified by going under the knife as fully developed adults with set bone structures!

Even more absurdly, this batch of sixty people actually achieved a one hundred percent surgical success rate!

Not a single one died from rejection!

Since when has becoming the Angel of Death of the God-Emperor, feared by mortals, become as simple as drinking water?!

Just as Bale is unable to figure it out.

The Apothecary walks into the observation room, holding a thick stack of data reports, his footsteps unsteady and his demeanor timid.

His eye sockets are sunken; evidently, the high-intensity, large-scale modification surgeries over this period have exhausted him, but his mental state remains quite good.

"Uh... Captain."

The Apothecary swallows hard and begins to explain his magical journey over the past few days in a hoarse voice:

"You know how high the mortality rate is for adult modification.

When the first mortal named John Cena had all the organs forcibly stuffed into him by me and miraculously survived.

I initially suspected it was just a matter of probability, that this guy was just too lucky and the God-Emperor wouldn't take him."

"To verify this hypothesis, I bit the bullet and selected a second mortal to operate on.

The result... the second one survived without any suspense, and his wounds even healed faster than his!"

The Apothecary rubs his bloodshot eyes:

"At that point, I thought my years of surgical technique had achieved a significant breakthrough and improvement!

So, to rule out errors caused by technical proficiency.

I switched to the most brutal implantation method, the one most likely to cause massive hemorrhaging, to perform a comparative surgery on the third person."

"The result! Not only did the third one succeed, but he was also chatting with me on the operating table!"

"With the fourth one, I suspected that the batch of gene-seeds in our warehouse was of too high quality.

So I deliberately switched to a batch of seeds with minor flaws for implantation."

The Apothecary spreads his hands in despair:

"So, Captain. After the previous trial-and-error attempts, I simply gave up, treated it like an assembly line, and operated on them all at once.

As you can see, sixty adults, and not a single death."

After hearing this absurd report, Bale waves his hand to stop the Apothecary's rambling.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and only after a long time does he open them again, his gaze returning to its usual coldness.

"Since they have successfully withstood the rejection reaction and become true Astartes."

Bale orders coldly,

"Then don't worry about how they survived. Take them all away and immediately proceed to the final step—hypnotic indoctrination!"

In the creation process of a Space Marine, physical modification is only the foundation; control of the mind is the core.

So-called hypnotic indoctrination involves having the recruits lie in special hypnotic chambers at regular intervals.

Through electrodes on the helmet, high-intensity electrochemical stimulation and subconscious information input are applied directly to the cerebral cortex.

During this process, the machine will forcibly encode "absolute loyalty to the God-Emperor," "rigid adherence to Chapter honor," and "heavy responsibility to the Imperium of Man," directly into the deepest parts of the recruits' subconscious in the form of physical code!

During this indoctrination, the Chapter's ancient traditions, tactical formations, combat litanies, and various behavioral taboos are also implanted.

This is equivalent to forcibly completing ideological education in a few short days that would take an ordinary person decades to digest.

Such brutal physical brainwashing is far more profound than the preaching of an ordinary Political Commissar and is almost irreversible.

Of course, the means of maintaining loyalty are not limited to this.

In the subsequent daily training of the recruits. It must be combined with daily chanting of the Emperor's Litany, pre-battle blood-anointing blessings, and various internal memorial ceremonies of the Chapter.

Deeply binding this loyalty to personal religious faith and life honor!

Making the recruits believe in their subconscious: To betray the God-Emperor is equivalent to denying the entire meaning of one's own existence; the Chapter highly values selfless sacrifice and brotherhood.

Defection means being permanently nailed to the pillar of shame, and being stripped of all identity, dignity, and soul!

These are the spiritual reformations that every Astartes must undergo.

Now that the bodies have been modified, the next step is the ideological modification to domesticate this pack of wild wolves into loyal dogs.

From the perspective of the indigenous people, this is relatively the simplest step.

The Apothecary accepts the order and leads the sixty player recruits, who have just gained extraordinary power, toward the hypnotic chambers deep within the ship.

The sixty modified players, like they are strolling through an anime convention, look around curiously, following behind the Servitor.

In the ranks, [Toothpick Stirring the Big Vat] gently nudges [Chishi Technology], who has also become tall and fierce, with an elbow as thick as a tree trunk.

"Hey, Chishi." Toothpick lowers his voice, winking, "Judging by the tone of those NPCs, they are about to take us into the dark room for Professor Yang's 'electro-shock brainwashing.'

What do you say? Should we log off directly to avoid it, or stay inside and watch how the brainwashing CG animation plays out?"

Chishi Technology rolls his eyes and complains in a gruff voice: "Watch what, my ass! What's there to watch in that boring, forced cutscene CG?"

"Anyway, their so-called physical hypnotic technique has absolutely no effect on us; at most, it's just like watching a slideshow."

Chishi kindly reminds the brothers around him: "Listen up, everyone! After you lie down in a moment, log off and go to sleep immediately! Log back in after twenty-four hours tomorrow.

Remember one thing! The first time you see an NPC after waking up when you log in. Just open your mouth and shout loyalty, and close it while shouting for the God-Emperor; you can't go wrong! Don't blow your cover!"

"Otherwise, the NPC will judge that your brainwashing is unqualified and will drag you back for another day of electro-shock therapy.

This is the walkthrough secret that the big shot John Cena on the forum tested out with blood and tears after being shocked three times!"

After hearing this, the players suddenly realize, giving an OK gesture.

The group arrives at the hypnotic room.

Under the guidance of the Servitor, the players cooperate very well, one could even say impatiently, lying into those metal hypnotic incubation chambers covered in cables.

Afterward, they choose to log off collectively without hesitation.

Sixty massive bodies instantly fall into silence.

The Apothecary stands before the main console, activates all the electrode equipment, and then heavily closes the thick door of the hypnotic room.

Having done all this, the Apothecary leans wearily against the wall.

He takes out the thick stack of gene observation records, his eyes flickering with fanatical thirst for knowledge.

"Excluding all external technical variables," the Apothecary looks at the data on the paper and mutters to himself, "The only reason for this one hundred percent super high success rate... is their impeccable, perfect pure-blood genes, comparable to the ancient ancestors!"

"But these gene samples are not enough!"

On the other side. Company Captain Bale returns to the command bridge of the "Pale Maw".

Looking at the sea of stars outside the window, the Captain feels an unbearable headache at this moment, his temples throbbing.

Theoretically, the sudden addition of sixty powerful Space Marine brothers to the company should be a great joy worth holding a feast to celebrate for the 3rd Company, which has been short of men for years.

But! For the entire Carcharodons Chapter, which is so poor it can't even afford to put food on the table, this is simply a logistical disaster!

The first problem faced is the most fatal issue of equipment shortages!

The Carcharodons Chapter is truly too poor!

And these sixty recruits, after secondary development, now have an average physique of about three meters!

They are a head taller than the veteran Captain Bale, and their frames are extremely large.

And this means that they simply cannot wear the standard-sized Mark series Power Armor in the Chapter!

To get them onto the battlefield, they must be tailor-equipped with the most massive and precious Terminator heavy Power Armor!

"That is sixty sets of Terminator Power Armor!!"

Bale covers his face in pain, "In this godforsaken edge of the void, let alone sixty sets, even if I go steal or rob right now, I can't scrape together that many Terminator armors! Should I let them fight demons naked?"

Moreover, besides the shortage of Power Armor, the gene-seed reserves in the company's cold storage are also in critical condition.

The situation of the 3rd Company is very special; although they possess the secret means to cultivate their own unique mutated gene-seeds.

But unfortunately, the output is very limited. These sixty people emptied the entire inventory in one go.

Bale thinks for a long time on the throne of the bridge, unable to come up with any good solution to this mess.

In the end, he decides to give up.

"Report directly to Chapter Master Tyberos, who is fighting in other sectors!"

"These soldiers were brought back by him; let the Chapter Master worry about the equipment himself!"